Sydney Motorsport Park was the backdrop of a weekend of learning as Rylan Gray made his debut with the Shell V Power Racing Team as a full time Supercars driver.
There are a lot of positives to take away from his results, including finishing 11th in the final race of the weekend on Sunday, February 22, but it was far from an easy drive.
“We had decent speed over the weekend, qualifying got better and better throughout the weekend, and then Sunday we had a really fast car,” Rylan shared.
“We made up some spots in the race, even with a 15 second penalty we nearly got to the top 10 which was which was pretty good.”
The penalty was for a lap one incident and was served in his first pit stop of the race which made it possible for him to push on and achieve a respectable result.
“It was just something you have got to deal with, you’re best to get your mistakes and penalties out of the way in the first round, so you don’t get them further throughout the year,” he shared hopefully.
His Upper Hunter upbringing, and work as a boilermaker, may have helped Rylan through the discomfort of needing to turn his cooling systems off around 15 laps into the 52-lap afternoon race due to alternator issues.
Busy is how Rylan described the week that started with testing on Wednesday and Thursday, followed by racing Friday through Sunday as well as additional media and sponsor commitments.
“It’s been really, really fun with Brodie, he’s definitely a different character and we gel together really well,” Rylan told The Hunter River Times of his teammate Brodie Kostecki.
“It’s really good to build a relationship there and starting to get a better relationship with the team as well so we can work together better on race weekends.”
This weekend the Supercars will run at the Melbourne GP with the F1 championship, and then they will head over to New Zealand for two rounds, Taupo and Christchurch, in April.
-JEM ANSHAW
